Residents head home after fire burns 5 houses
WHITE SALMON, Wash. – Most residents were being allowed to return to their homes Friday evening after firefighters had a successful day battling a 150-acre wildfire.
“We got a lot of good work done,” said Dale Warriner, a spokesman at the fire command center. “We feel they can go back in safely.”
Warriner said residents of all but three homes in the vicinity of the fire could return beginning at 6 p.m.
The wildfire, in the southeastern corner of Skamania County, about 60 miles east of Portland, destroyed five homes on a bluff overlooking the Columbia and one below. Owners of the burned homes were also being allowed back, Warriner said.
The fire had been pushed by strong winds Thursday in the Columbia River Gorge, but winds were much calmer Friday.
The Broughton fire, named for an old mill site, had burned less than one-fourth of a square mile, about 150 acres, and was about 60 percent contained by midday Friday, Warriner said.
The blaze started three miles west of White Salmon near the bottom of the gorge at about 11:30 a.m. Thursday and quickly raced uphill through rugged terrain of brush and timber, then largely settled down overnight as winds subsided, fire dispatchers said.
Residents of a bluff above where the wind-whipped fire started were told Thursday afternoon to leave their homes.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated and an evacuation center was set up at a local school.
About 120 firefighters were aided by four helicopters that scooped water from the river to drop it on the fire Thursday, and another 180 firefighters from around the state were added overnight.
The gorge is a national scenic area and is renowned as a windsurfing location because of the funneling effect of the steep bluffs where the Columbia cuts through the Cascade Range on its way to the Pacific Ocean.
Also Friday, an abandoned plywood mill burned to the ground near the site of the wildfire, though officials said the two fires were not related.
The fire broke out Friday afternoon near Stevenson, about 20 miles west of White Salmon, at the old Stevenson Co-Ply Mill, which was shuttered in 1992.